Musings Winter 2022 written by John Lohuis
Have you ever wondered how parks will function and what parks will look like 20 years from now? Will your role as a parks manager change from what you do today? What will not change is that parks are an inalterable element of society and function on many dimensions to help this planet cope with continuing challenges. In Britain, parks advocates are sounding the alarm about the future of parks as they are currently threatened by attacks on the quantity and quality of the resource. The very identity of how a park is perceived is being clouded and blended into so many commercial properties, developed housing and separation space for roads. A concept being used to strengthen and clarify the role of parks is called, parks as a differential public entity; in other words, parks need to keep a strong distinct footprint and public perception, not as a subset of other interests. Like the example of the environment, it is so easy to subtract elements from the “parks bank account” without the general public knowing, with many greater impacts and costs coming forth later.
social issues inherent in public parks.
Record immigration to Canada is expected to continue as our current reproductive rate is not sufficient to take care of all those older Baby Boomers and even Gen X’ers! Many more diverse festivals, gatherings and public holidays will take place in public parks as long as our Canadian background continues to respect many cultures. Such tolerance and respect that includes Indigenous populations will be an important element of a society that can positively grow and flourish. Increasingly, a greater percentage of the Canadian population; young and old are living alone and therefore use of parks can be an important outlet outside of their homes if such parks are of a quality and interest to allow such use. The critical role of parks as a place for inexpensive, healthy pursuits will continue and allow people (and their pets) to meet each other. Smaller parks and trails along with “Community or District Parks” will become more important and become “harder- working” as parkland will become more scarce yet having even a smaller green space within 500-800 metres will be ever more important. Even air rights will become important as shown by Toronto’s recent musings to build parks above Union Station. Hopefully, more food gardens, diversified natural features, works of art, memorable elements of parks will drive more citizens to enjoy the outdoors. It’s therefore, parks managers will be very important in helping to arbitrate amongst the many potential uses of parks along with limited carrying capacity of those parks. With many high-rise condominium developments; there are too many people seeking limited park areas; more intensive uses are forecast for these areas.
Social Climate and Cultural Diversity
The parks manager now, and more so in the future, might well be called a “social engineer”. The many visitors to parks visit for many different reasons; think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need which starts at very basic needs to move to someone “self actualizing” their higher-order needs and spiritual selves. John Hannah’s recent column in this newsletter, featured Tommy Thomson’s work which highlighted the range of emotions that people feel when visiting parks. Regrettably, some people at the lowest rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy are using parks for basic needs, which only underscores the
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The Green Sward – Winter 2022
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